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2019-06-10
Barr Foundation;
During 2018 and 2019, a working group of district and charter school leaders and other education stakeholders from urban and rural locations across the state met to explore ways to increase the effectiveness of principals leading Massachusetts schools. The Barr Foundation engaged Attuned Education Partners to facilitate this group and lead implementation of the learning agendas developed by its members. Together, they prioritized key challenges and identified solutions that research suggests are most likely to strengthen principalship and drive better outcomes for students—especially the students of color and English learners that the state is currently serving least well. This summary highlights their findings and insights. See the full report for more on the challenges and solutions—plus case studies and recommended action steps for state policymakers, school system leaders, principal preparation program providers, and funders.
2019-05-22
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
The United States continues to be the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation and holidays. This report is the third revision of No-Vacation Nation (2007) and No-Vacation Nation Revisited (2013) comparing the statutory requirements for paid vacations and paid holidays in 21 rich countries (16 European countries, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand) and the United States. Workers in the European Union are legally guaranteed at least 20 paid vacation days per year, with some countries mandating up to at least 30 days. Nearly all other rich countries also provide paid holidays to supplement the paid vacation required to their workers.
Close to 1 in 4 US workers do not receive paid vacation or paid holidays. The absence of a mandated paid vacation time policy disparately impacts lower-wage workers, those employed part-time, and workers employed by smaller businesses. Throughout the report, we distinguish between paid vacations — also referred to as paid annual leave — and paid holidays, which are organized around particular fixed dates in the calendar. Our analysis does not cover paid leave for other reasons such as sick leave, parental leave, or leave to care for sick relatives.
2019-03-05
Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning at WestEd;
Produced by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning at WestEd, this 13th annual report on the California teacher workforce takes an extended look at principals in our Golden State and their vital role in supporting teacher effectiveness.
The Center provides new information on budget cutbacks to teacher professional development, declining enrollment in preparation programs, drops in the rate of newly credentialed teachers, and escalating educator retirements.
The report also looks at how California's school principals perceive their role and how well-prepared they are in helping their teachers become more effective educators.
In addition to research and analyses, this report offers useful recommendations. How can we improve the state's system of teacher development and evaluation in ways that strengthen the quality of classroom practice? How can we help educators prepare for the challenge of implementing the Common Core State Standards?
2019-02-28
Economic Policy Institute;
Nonstandard or alternative employment relations refer to employment by a temporary help agency or contract company or as an on-call worker or day laborer. We refer to these nonstandard employment relations (which involve an employer and employee) and independent contracting collectively as nonstandard or alternative work arrangements in this report. Contingent workers are workers who do not expect their job to last or who report that their jobs are temporary. Contingent workers and workers in alternative work arrangements are measured separately. Both have become increasingly prominent in theoretical and policy thinking about how employment has changed in recent years in the United States and other post-industrial countries.
Until recently, only relatively poor information on the extent of contingent work and nonstandard work arrangements and how this has changed during the past several decades has been available. The May 2017 Contingent Worker Supplement (CWS) — conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 12 years after the last CWS and 22 years after the first — provides an opportunity to examine how contingent work and nonstandard work arrangements have changed over the last two-plus decades. This report examines these changes between 2005 and 2017, with special attention to how older workers — ages 55 to 65 and 65+ — have fared.
2019-02-13
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
Most Americans know that their earnings are subject to the Social Security payroll tax. Not as many are aware that the amount of earnings subject to the tax, while liable to change, is capped at the same level for everyone, regardless of total earnings. This year, the maximum wage earnings subject to the payroll tax is $132,900.
The cap on the Social Security payroll tax means that those with the highest earnings effectively pay a lower rate. People who earn a million dollars a year pay this tax on about an eighth of their earnings. People who earn a quarter of a million dollars pay the tax on just over half their earnings. It is important to note that this just applies to wage earnings, not other forms of income. If the individual earning $250,000 a year makes another $250,000 from investments, then they end up paying the Social Security tax on about a fourth of their income. The vast majority of workers fall below the $132,900 cap though, and have significantly less stock or other income, if any. As a result, all or most of their income is subject to the payroll tax.
2019-02-04
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
In the absence of national paid leave laws, some states have responded by creating programs that provide partial replacement of lost wages when urgent health or family needs mean workers must miss work. The three states with the longest track records are California, which implemented paid family leave in 2004; New Jersey, which implemented it in 2008; and Rhode Island, which followed in 2014. All three have had paid medical leave to address a worker's own serious illness for 70 years or more. Today, six states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws that provide workers with paid family and medical leave. Despite the existence of these state laws, both awareness and usage — especially among workers in low-paid jobs and members of minority communities — have been low.
This report examines a number of innovative projects in California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island designed to produce usable knowledge about what works — and what doesn't — in raising awareness among workers most likely to need paid family leave and least likely to know about it. It draws the lessons learned in the field and provides guidance to advocates in states with paid family and medical leave programs as they design interventions to address this challenge.
2019-02-01
Social IMPACT Research Center;
Chicago is in so many ways a thriving global city. But far too many of us face the daily reality of financialinsecurity caused by jobs that don't pay enough to live on, that have unstable hours, and that don't providebenefits that many in the workforce a generation ago enjoyed. Both as a city and as a people, economicresilience in the face of change is critical to create a thriving metropolis, yet strong forces are pushing us awayfrom this, not towards it: deep racial and gender inequity; steadily widening income inequality; the erosion ofthe middle class; the rise in contingent work and looming automation of jobs. The result? Work is unreliableand income is precarious for those living in deep poverty and all the way up into the middle class.In response to these realities, last summer the Chicago City Council passed a resolution to create the ChicagoResilient Families Initiative Task Force to assess and determine the scope of a guaranteed income pilot aswell as solutions to modernize the Earned Income Tax Credit. Since then, at the behest of Mayor Emanuel,the task force has met, learned, dug deep and explored different paths to economic security and resiliencyfor Chicagoans. We sought advice from community residents and national experts who have been engageddeeply in these questions for years
2019-01-30
Carsey School of Public Policy at The University of New Hampshire;
Sexual harassment in the workplace is a serious problem affecting workers across the United States and in New Hampshire. Nationwide, approximately four in ten women and more than one in ten men have been victims of workplace sexual harassment in their lifetimes. Research shows that such harassment has lasting economic, health, and family-related consequences for victims and their families: it increases victims' job exits and financial stress, alters career paths, and has deleterious consequences for mental and physical health, including depression, anger, and self-doubt
2019-01-28
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation;
In 2014, Ithaka S+R partnered with The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), and the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) to study the representational diversity within art museums through quantitative means. To collect this data, Ithaka S+R developed a survey instrument which was administered to directors of AAMD and AAM member art museums.
Four years later, we have administered a similar instrument to these museum directors in order to gauge the extent to which museum staff have changed demographically in recent years. The instrument was slightly expanded, affording new insights into the composition of art museum employees.
Key Findings
Gender remains majority female; museum leadership positions have grown five percentage points more female in last four years.
In curatorial roles, management positions are about 15 percentage points more male than non-management roles.
Museum staff have become more racially and ethnically diverse over the last four years.
Among intellectual leadership positions, education and curatorial departments have grown more diverse in terms of race/ethnicity, while conservation and museum leadership have not changed.
2019-01-02
"La Caixa" Banking Foundation;
The Work 4 Progress program of "la Caixa" Banking Foundation aims to promote employment for women and young people facing difficulties in accessing the labour market in the most vulnerable and excluded sectors. Development Alternatives is the lead partner for W4P in India. The program aims to expand economic opportunities for youth and women that have difficulties in accessing enterprise development solutions in economically backward regions.
"la Caixa" Banking Foundation of Spain is the third largest foundation worldwide in number of assets. The institution has focused its philanthropic activity on social programs, culture, science and education, for the last 100 years. Development Alternatives (DA) is a premier social enterprise working in the field of sustainable development. Established in 1983, and headquartered in New Delhi, it has built a global presence in the fields of green economic development, social equity and environmental management.
2018-12-31
Rockefeller Foundation;
In 2013, the United Nations projected that Africa would be home to over 40 percent of the global youth population by 2030. The challenge of how to successfully absorb these young people into the formal economy became top of mind for governments, policymakers and development practitioners.
Thinking toward this future, The Rockefeller Foundation recognized the potential of Africa's growing information and communications technology (ICT) sector to create new economic opportunities – particularly for its young people. The Foundation created its Digital Jobs Africa (DJA) initiative to help equip youth – specifically those with limited access to opportunities – with the technical and soft skills, and job placement support necessary to transition into a technology-enabled workforce.
Nearly five years into implementation, the Foundation commissioned an independent evaluation of DJA to better understand the extent to which it was realizing its goals and driving impact. Genesis Analytics was engaged to collect data and gather case stories from participating youth in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa.
